The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Blistering performances.

Although not a cult movie, Valley of the kings is a nice entertaining movie. For me it has a special flavor as I had left definitely Egypt 3 years before to settle with my parents in Paris.I saw the movie when it was released in Paris in 1954. I enjoyed it. It was the occasion to see those magnificent temples and especially Abu Simbel where is shot one of the main scenes. At that time the Assuan Dam had not provoked the disastrous effects we know today nor obliged to move the temple. The faces of Ramses II were not spoiled by the cuts visible today due to the move in several sections of this splendid masterpiece of art and architecture.It is worth seeing such a movie with a good cast and dream a little to what was the shock in those times for the lucky traveler able to reach them. Imagine what was the shock of Belzoni when he discovered the temple sunk into the sand!

Although the credits don't spell this out, our script is actually based on the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb by Howard Carter in 1922. Our film-makers have put the story back another twenty years or so to 1900. This comes as a welcome surprise as there's absolutely no indication in any of the movie's publicity blurbs (not even in the studio-prepared script synopsis) that Valley of the Kings is a period picture. Needless to say, the lovely Miss Parker does more than justice to her period costumes. In fact, the period setting is brilliantly realized all around. The script serves us well, the sets are never less than awesomely fascinating, and the whole movie is always beautifully framed and photographed. The stars in particular are most attractively lensed. The support players, especially Kurt Kasznar, Victor Jory and Leon Askin, keep our attention taut, while director Pirosh keeps his story moving along at an admirably fast clip right from the wow of a chase at the beginning up to the terrific fight climax atop a gigantic statue (a scene you'll never forget)! And every bit of chase action from go to whoa is imbued with a rousingly atmospheric Rozsa score. Unfortunately, the Australian release cut now seems to have disappeared. It ran an extra 3 minutes which was entirely devoted to making the chase at the beginning far more breathlessly exciting that it is now – most disappointingly – in the truncated U.S. release version.

Archaeologist Mark Brandon (Robert Taylor) is recruited by Ann Mercedes (Eleanor Parker) to help search for proof of the existence of the biblical Joseph in Egypt. Mark agrees, in part because he was a former student of Ann's father and in part because he finds her attractive. After they start their journey, however, they are joined by Ann's husband (Carlos Thompson). Anyone familiar with movies like this knows right away Ann's husband will turn out to be a villain. Why? Because Taylor and Parker are stars and Thompson is very much a nobody. So it was always inevitable that somehow the two stars would end up together at the end. The only way to make this palatable would be to make the husband a villain before killing him off. Which is what they do.Anyway it's a fairly dull adventure film. Taylor is supposed to be the exciting one but he's pretty stiff to me. The rest of the cast is unremarkable. The best thing about it is the nice Miklos Rosza score.

The Egyptology in this picture is strictly Hollywood nonsense, so don't even remotely expect a storyline with accurate historical details. Also, don't expect Robert Taylor learned how to act by 1954. His performance in this is as bland and stiff as anything he ever did. Eleanor Parker is eye candy, but her role leaves a lot to be desired. The plot is flimsy and routine, the story clunky and too often melodramatic, and the villains 2 dimensional at best. The film runs only 86 minutes, which indicates the writers had no real ideas how to make this the kind of exciting, exotic two fisted adventure it should have been.That all said, there is some good stuff in this, and though disappointing overall, it is still a fairly entertaining hour and a half if you like these kind of adventure yarns. Taylor, as mentioned, is a drag, but he does manage to get into a couple of nifty scrapes ala Indiana Jones. The Egyptian locales are stunning and used to maximum effect in Technicolor. The classic adventure elements - camel rides in the desert, exotic temples, pitfalls and puzzles - are all served up and this film was surely one of the templates Spielberg/Lucas/Kasdan used for Raiders of the Lost Ark.For the adventure aspect alone this film is worth a look. It promises much more than it delivers in most areas but there are thousands of worse films you could spend an hour and a half on.